Tag: Kerry Washington

Hearts in the Highlands.

All the King’s Men by way of Heart of Darkness (and more than a dash of Hotel Rwanda), Kevin MacDonald’s The Last King of Scotland is a harrowing portrait of the scampish, fun-loving, paranoid, and genocidal Idi Amin, former president/warlord of Uganda, and a moderately engaging cautionary tale about the dangers of seeking to find oneself in a place one doesn’t belong. Somewhat clunkily assembled (despite being co-written by Peter Morgan, screenwriter of The Queen) and suffering from a third act that, like its protagonist, gets lost somewhere amidst its downward trajectory, The Last King of Scotland is a film mostly redeemed by excellent performances — notably Forest Whitaker as Amin and James McAvoy as our (anti-)hero, but also Gillian Anderson, Simon McBurney, and others in supporting roles. It wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping or expecting, but it’s definitely worth a rental — for Whitaker if for nothing else — if you can handle the increasingly graphic carnage of the film’s final hour.

As the film begins, it’s 1970, and (the fictional) Nicholas Gerrigan (James McAvoy of The Chronicles of Narnia) is a recently-minted doctor and young, debaucherous Scotsman looking for a life less suffocating than the one on the plate before him, taking over the family practice. Choosing Uganda more or less at random (he spins a globe to choose his fate, but not without first exercising some veto power), Gerrigan soon finds himself one of two doctors on hand in an overworked clinic deep in the African hinterlands, where the only fun to be had is making flagrant passes at his colleague’s do-gooder wife (Gillian Anderson).

Fate rescues Gerrigan from his ennui, however, in the form of a traffic accident — one which brings him to the attention of Uganda’s new leader, the Scotland-adoring Idi Amin (Whitaker). Soon thereafter, Gerrigan has been made Amin’s personal doctor and “closest advisor,” meaning he spends a lot of time dissolute by the pool, unwittingly (and soon deliberately) oblivious to the bloody machinations holding Amin’s regime in power. That is, until his own somewhat-inadvertent complicity in a murder — as well as some really poor life decisions — force Gerrigan to confront the monstrosities laid before him. This place is a prison, he soon discovers, and these people very clearly aren’t his friends.

As it almost had to be, The Last King of Scotland is most enjoyable in its first hour, as Gerrigan is slowly seduced by the life Amin offers him, and all the sultry pleasures therein included. When it all turns on him, and Gerrigan discovers the heavy price of his fool’s paradise, the film quickly descends into a hell that’s not only hard to watch (one grisly scene brought back unsettling childhood memories of watching…I think it was A Man Called Horse — you’ll know it when you see it) but also somewhat repetitive. How many slo-mo shots of a druggy and/or horrified Gerrigan set to acid-rock do we really need here? Moreover, the film telegraphs one of the good doctor’s key indiscretions for far too long — at least forty minutes is spent simply waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak.

That being said, Forrest Whitaker’s performance here makes up for a lot of mistakes. (Seeing the clearly quiet-natured Whitaker’s shellshocked acceptance speech at the Globes last weekend made his work here seem all the more surprising and impressive.) The Willie Stark last year’s All the King’s Men desperately needed, Whitaker commands the camera in every scene he’s in — His Amin is all the more horrifying because he’s basically an overgrown boy, all appetite and no restraint. In every scene, you can sense him lumbering somewhere on the border between childish glee and murderous rage, and we never know where the axe will fall…only that, when it does, it’s not going to be pretty.

Moving right out of Babylon.

In a special Africa-themed edition of the movie bin, a young Scottish doctor (former faun James McAvoy) hangs with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (Forrest Whitaker) and Gillian Anderson in the new trailer for The Last King of Scotland, potentially crooked cop Nic Vos (Tim Robbins) spurs Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke) to rally against South African apartheid in the trailer for Phillip Noyce’s Catch a Fire (which continues the director’s move from Patriot Games-type thrillers to global-political fare such as Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American), and things go awry in Morocco for Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett (and elsewhere for Gael Garcia Bernal and Clifton Collins Jr.) in this look at Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Babel. (Let’s hope it’s better than Inarritu’s woeful 21 Grams.)

Love is a Battlefield.

Ok, I know that I shouldn’t have been expecting much more than some eye candy, a few decent action sequences and two hours of air conditioning. But, I’ll admit, I was disappointed by Mr. & Mrs. Smith — Director Doug Liman did a great job with The Bourne Identity a few years ago, and I generally root for both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But, while Pitt is as aw-shucks amiable as usual (his stint in Troy aside) and Jolie is, as always, very easy on the eyes, there just isn’t much here. Sure, marriage as war is a metaphor that’s been mined pretty thoroughly over the years…but one can usually still find choicer nuggets than the ones making up this flick. In short, the script is half-baked and the action is overdone.

Beginning with a marriage counselor interview intercut with the credit sequence (it plays a bit like the opening to The Incredibles) followed by a meet-cute in Colombia “five or six years earlier,” Smith seems intriguing enough at first glance…sort of an actioner by way of a Steven Soderbergh film. But the movie then takes way too long establishing its central conceit — we’re a good forty minutes in before the spy vs. spy angle is worked out — particularly given that Pitt and Jolie seem so woefully out of place in the burbs.

That being said, the early going is probably the film’s better half. Once the two start going after each other, and particularly after the big marital mano-a-mano, the movie takes several increasingly graceless lapses into absurdity. Most of the big action setpieces, particularly the finale in a department store, not only don’t make any narrative sense but have zero danger to them. (Really, what was the point of setting up these two as crack shots at the Coney Island fairground, if they continually miss each other from point-blank range? These Agents Smith are even more bullet-proof than Hugo Weaving in The Matrix.)

Action aside, the script also takes a turn for the hammy as Mr. & Mrs. Smith progresses. The more Pitt and Jolie begin to discover about each other, the less and less they sound like a married couple. And, after awhile, the movie’s ingratiating penchant of doing just about anything for a laugh, from funny faces to cat sound effects to Air Supply and “The Girl from Ipanema,” gets kinda tiresome. (Particularly egregious in this regard is every scene with Vince Vaughn, where the same “living at home with mom” joke is made over and over again.) By the time The OC‘s Adam Brody flaunts his Fight Club T-shirt while getting grilled by Pitt, I had had enough already. What can I say? I really thought Mr. & Mrs. Smith was gonna work out, but eventually, the thrill was gone.

Shadow of the Bat.


A good deal of movie and fanboy news came down the pike this weekend. First and most importantly, the new Batman Begins poster is out (and a new trailer is rumored in front of Ocean’s 12 this Friday.) As one AICN wag put it, it’s very Passion of the Bat. In other news, Harrison Ford says Indy IV is moving again, Chris Columbus is directing Sub-Mariner (uh, oh), and Kevin Spacey is seriously considering Lex Luthor. Finally, the teaser posters for Mr. & Mrs. Smith (a.k.a. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in War of the Roses meets True Lies) are now also floating around the ether, along with the new trailer. Update: The international poster for Batman Begins is now also online.

Feeling Rock, Seeing Spots.

In comic casting news, Laurie Holden (a.k.a. Marita Covarrubias of The X-Files) is rumored to have been cast as The Thing’s fiancee Debbie in Fantastic Four (Debbie? I take it she’s pre-Alicia Masters, who may be played by Kerry Washington of She Hate Me.) And Simon Pegg, whose praises I was just singing as Shaun of the Dead, may be up for Rorschach in The Watchmen. Ooh, that’s a great idea.